Tuesday, September 11, 2007

This is a little peek into the pyschosis of animation. Though I'm sure anyone can relate to this kinda stuff. I start flipping through shots I finished weeks ago for this music video and just started redrawing a lot of the key frames.

This is the result of several factors.

1. I find that my drawings age over a period of time. I'll look at drawings from my old short and cringe at some of them. I can see where the proportions are all off and where features look squashed in one shot and stretched in another. Sometimes it just takes a day or an hour or two, you just need those fresh eyes I guess, but looking at the drawings upside down, through the back with a lightbox or in a mirror helps see the asymmetry.

2. If you do one off projects, like music videos or shorts, and are unprepared like me and don't have loads of time already spent with drawing the characters, you might find you don't have the character designs down pat when you start jumping into the animating stage. I've found that only until the end of things do I finally know my characters, and the first shots I did I need some fixing.

3. I really rushed through the animation on IIUM/KUS, which you will soon be able to see, and I really want this video to have some solid designs, especially since the character is stationary in a lot of parts.

The great Matt Sheridan said two things, though he might have been quoting other people. At any rate- at some point he said it takes like 100 drawings to get your character down, maybe it was 500 though. . . and that we all have 10,000 bad drawings in us. Thanks to Christen for reminding me about that last one. I dunno, THINK ABOUT IT.

Somebody remind me to talk about drawing ladies next time. Anyways, back to animating.

I'm in the 2:00 to 4:30 block in case anyone in DC metro area is interested. I think I'm going to have to talk about stuff. I'll bring my presentation on Atlantis just in case. People need to know the truth.

Saturday, September 1, 2007

Check it out. It took like 6 South Park Episodes to color once I had the scheme down.

Some of the stuff might change slightly (the text will be handwritten) but for the most part this is it. I really wish I knew color theory better. It takes me a while to figure what looks good together and create a pallet to work from.